EDMONTON- ‘What’s your K?’ That’s the question Northlands is asking Edmontonians, as it kicks off one of the city’s biggest summer festivals.
“We’ve given this event back to the community and we’ve said ‘you know what you want best. Tell us what you want.’ They’ve told us,” President and CEO of Northlands Richard Andersen said at an announcement for the summer festival Thursday afternoon.
In 2006, the popular summer festival was renamed Capital Ex. But when the name didn’t resonate with fairgoers, Northlands invited to public to vote on a new name last year.
“We didn’t name it. The public named it. I think 40,000 plus out of 50,000 votes were for K-Days which shocked us,” Andersen said.
But the meaning of ‘K’ was never outlined. While many still hold the festival’s old name Klondike Days near to their hearts, Andersen hopes the public will take the ‘K’ and make the festival their own experience.
“The real theme is ‘What’s your K?'” he said, “It’s really about people coming out and having an opportunity to build their memories and great fun, festive experiences.”
During Thursday’s announcement, Mayor Stephen Mandel was named parade marshall for the K-Day’s parade. This year, the parade will be held on the first day of the festival, one of the many changes Northlands says is on the way for this summer’s event.
“K-days is a major event in the city and the parade’s been going since 1910 or something like that, so it’ll be nice.”
However, even he wasn’t totally sure what his ‘K’ would stand for.
“I will always think of Klondike, even though it has no relevance anymore, but that’s what I guess it will be. But kids is another one.”
“There’s a group of people that resonate with the piece of Klondike Days and we’re going to, as we’ve said all along, we’re going to give a nod to that as a part of K-Days,” explained Andersen, “But we’re clearly looking to the future with ‘What’s your K?’ and people are getting excited about that.”
Also announced Thursday was the new ‘Koodonation’ music stage, with a list of music headliners including Colin James, Down With Webster, Chad Brownlee, Dallas Smith, and Canadian rapper Classified.
And sticking with ‘looking to the future,’ Andersen says Edmontonians can expect about 17 more changes to this year’s festival to be announced in the coming weeks.
With files from Shannon Greer, Global News.
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